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Hi Ho, Hi Ho

Nostalgia for the days when labor's power was ascendent is tempting when viewing "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?, a cartoon parable on worker unity composed by the Screen Cartoonist's Guild during a strike in 1941 (found via the indispensible Flat Earth).

Then there's Disney's current reality. I'm not talking about "the shareholder rebellion" against Michael Eisner. I find it hard to relate to their gripes, sorry. Compared to Disney's treatment of the lowly grunts slaving away in foreign sweatshops, the shareholder plight seems pretty tame. Consider, for example, Chinese workers.

According to this report from Students for Informed Career Decisions (a Stanford University project), relying on the findings of Hong Kong Christian Industrial Committee (HKCIC), the average Disney employee in China has numerous opportunities to get screwed:

• Factories visited by the HKCIC were found to often delay payments of wages and to request fees and deposits from workers when they are first hired to ensure they don't leave.


• It was observed that it was common practice for factories to require workers to work overtime, from between 11-16 hours a day for 6-7 days per week, violating Chinese labor laws which restrict overtime to one hour a day.


• Wages were found to average between 13.5 - 36 cents per hour whereas independent research groups in Hong Kong say one must make 87 cents an hour to meet the basic survival needs of a small family in a Chinese city.


• Many employees working at Disney-contracted factories in China, when interviewed, reported that they were not aware of their labor rights.  Workers report that any attempt to organize or protest would result in the employee being fired.

The SICD goes on to report that Disney does not deny these charges, but resorts to the usual "it's not our fault/responsibility" dodge so often employed in the age of corporate globalization.

1. The approach to monitoring that Disney has taken is "best suited to ensure consistency in compliance with its standards on a global basis.  While the company agrees that there may be a role for local nongovernmental organizations in special circumstances, there is neither an existing network of organizations to carry out such monitoring on a global basis nor a consensus on monitoring standards or methods.

2. The Code of Conduct has been printed in 50 different languages and is distributed to the company's licensees.

3. Publically disclosing the names and addresses of the factories will not do anything to improve conditions in factories overseas.

4. Calls for raising wages are not feasible or economically realistic.

Sure, these findings are five years old now, but a follow up report by HKCIC in 2000 (a full pdf can be found here) found "practices [that] not only violate Chinese Labor Law but Disney's Code of Conduct as well. Most workers know little or nothing about the company code.  It seems the promises, principles and clauses written in the company's code can be found only in a virtual "Disneyland." None of them are implemented in the real world." So no change.

Posted by kevinmoore at March 23, 2004 01:31 PM | TrackBack